Sunday, February 28, 2010

The problem with the 28th is that I have started 3 different posts (not counting this one) for this day & all of them are marked as drafts because for whatever reason, I deemed them unready for publishing.

There, my secret is out. I already told Jenn about it, I may as well tell you all. You've noticed I'm pretty good at updating the blog lately? That there's a new post every day? That in your feed reader, there's a lovely new specimen waiting for you, from me, each morning? That, my friends, is not because I am a super-motivated-super-organized-mega-mom. Do not be fooled. That is thanks to a nifty little feature from blogger called post-dating.

Actually I don't know what it's called. But when you're typing out your entry, there's a little link at the bottom, to the left, called "Post Options" and when you click on it, you see the "Post date and time" to the bottom, right of your entry. You'll notice that it is alterable* (is that a word?). It's great- you just tell Blogger when you would like your blog entry to appear and, like your own litte fairy blogmother, it dutifully makes it happen!

Something you should know before "trying this at home" is that you will need to make sure that your Timezone is correct in your Blogger Settings or you will be pretty frustrated, wondering why your Fairy Blogmother is defective. To do this, click on the Settings Tab, then Formatting, and scroll down to Time Zone. Save your settings & you're good to go.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Thursday we decided to bake brownies. While they were in the oven, both girls were on the floor by the stove, watching them bake. While I wasn't watching, Katrina screamed & started crying. I ran over, picked her up, and noticed her hand looked red & felt warm. I immediately put it under cold water. I checked it a couple of times unsure of whether she had actually burned herself as I suspected or whether she was crying because I was now freezing her hand. I saw a blister. I continued with the cold water. Then I wondered if there was more I could do for her & contemplated calling Telehealth (but I know it takes forever to get through to them), so I decided to call 911.

We've called 911 before from our house. Twice before. Both calls were initiated by Talia and neither of them involved an emergency. They were both flukes.

Long story less long, an ambulance came to check on her & I was left with instructions to keep her hand moist. (I knew that, but it was still good to know there wasn't more I could be doing). So after trying a wet receiving blanket (she didn't want to touch it) and forcing her hand under the tap to her fury, I filled the little plastic play tub with cool water and let her play and splash- that went over so much better. And after a little while I had a much happier baby.

Yesterday she woke up with a couple of mighty blisters on her fingers. After thinking about where she was at the time and where the burns are on her, I've determined that she likely held onto the side of the oven door & wrapped her little fingers around it, actually allowing her tiny fingers to touch the inside of the door. Poor baby!!

I like illustrations (and Photoshop)..

She didn't seem to be in pain yesterday. Ken put aloe on her fingers a couple of times while she slept, in the night. Yesterday morning she adapted well to being one-handed (we had her holding an aloe-soaked cotton ball with a baggie around her hand & a sock over that, and she was wearing a sleeper with fold-down mitts (with the mitt over that hand)... she's crafty & this was the first thing that she wasn't able to pull off!

I took the contraption off during her naps & a bath. Both girls got bathed yesterday because my mom came for the morning to help out and she brought with her a plug for the tub (we have been plugless for a week because someone came to fix the broken one and took it with them last Friday, never to return!!)

My heart hurts and I feel tired.

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On a sweet note, after the whole ordeal, I went upstairs to find a bandaid box on the floor in the hall, with bandaids all over the floor, and I remembered Talia presenting me with a bandaid for Katrina down in the kitchen while I was on the phone with 911. :)

Friday, February 26, 2010

My friend Jenn has a blog that I love to read- not just because I know her and her family, but also because she writes about the little moments and experiences in parenthood that so many of us can relate to, as mothers, and I love the way that she puts it all into words.

So, today I want to feature Jenn's blog, A Joyous Journey, but I'm doing so by having her post as my first guest blogger! Jenn shared with me an organizational system that she has come up with for her son's toys and daily routine, and I think it's great! I plan to find a way to implement this in our home, but until I do, I thought it would be great to let Jenn share the system with us as a guest blogger.

So, before I babble on too much, here's Jenn:

I had noticed that my two year old, Ben was enjoying dumping his toys out of their bins more than playing with them when he had full access to ALL his toys. As the first child and grandchild there was then, needless to say A LOT of toys to be dumped. The few moments it took him to empty the bins took me a lot longer to organize and clean up. I was sick of it!

I think I had been incorrect in assuming that he was old enough to appropriately self regulate himself in terms of activities throughout the morning as it seemed to include a lot of “dumping” and then he would be so overwhelmed with everything on the floor he wouldn’t play with anything.

I found success through desperation in putting all of his toys in his room, allowing one bin at a time to come into the playroom and allowing him to “trade” bins when he was done. I decided to take this a step further and take 5 large clear plastic bins to rotate so that there would be one bin of “new” toys each morning waiting for him. I tried to put one toy with lots of pieces in each bin so he could play with those toys without losing the pieces (and I could stop avoiding toys with more than two parts…)

When THIS proved also to be so successful, as I took his squealing with joy in the morning to the ring of “what I do today Mommy?!” I tried to make those bins a little more interesting by including special activities to do with Ben. With a new baby brother he was craving some Mommy time and this provided the perfect opportunity to give him this in a fun way as well as keep me motivated. I wrote different activity ideas out on index cards and allowed him to select one each morning for us to do together. Better yet we starting using these as collateral to get through his bedtime routine…when he has his jammies on, teeth brushed and lights off in his room he can pick the activity to look forward to the next morning!

In terms of the activity cards some are classic ideas like play dough; stickers or colouring but then I looked to Heathers blog as a source of inspiration for some more creative ideas. Her ideas, reviews, suggestions and links to other similar sites have been an invaluable resource for me. Ben and I are enjoying our special time together and are looking forward to the time when Jacob is old enough to join us. Thank you Heather, for your inspiring and beautiful blog- we LOVE it!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Well, it's definitely been more than a day or two, but when I posted Laura's session, I said I'd be back with before & afters, so here I am.

I do a lot of black background shots when I do a newborn session. This is one reason why my baby shoots take extra Photoshop time. But I love the result!

Sweet little Laura woke up with the dreaded baby acne a day or two before her session, so it was Photoshop to the rescue:

I have some pretty cool examples of non-baby acne removal as well, but I'm not sure that any of those clients would be too excited to have their acne displayed on my blog, so I'll keep them to myself. ;)

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I really love playing with Photoshop and seeing what I can pull off.

One of my favourite things to play with is faces (acne removal, teeth whitening, wrinkle lessening, skin smoothing, etc.)

I also think it's a lot of fun to attempt to take some pounds off of someone in Photoshop & make it look realistic. This is one I don't get to play with as often.

Is there anyone reading this out there that would like to send me a photo of themselves to let me play with taking some pounds off? If you're interested in seeing what I can do, send your photo to raisingmemories at gmail dot com. Include in your email permission for me to post the before & after on my blog, and send it off. I'll choose one to play with & post it here for you all to see :)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

1. Discussed how a tree's trunk is the widest, and then the big branches grow from it, and smaller branches and twigs grow from them.

2. Ripped pieces of masking tape and applied them to white paper, to make the shape of a tree.

3. Pressed the tape down really well.

4. Painted the background onto the page.

5. Paint snow onto some sort of clear paper (we used part of a freezer bag, but it didn't work well- the paint started falling off after it dried... perhaps using white out would work better than the paint!).

If you get the magazine by mail, you can have your child look at the pictures in the magazine while they listen to the story. Of course, reading to them yourself is ideal, but I think Talia likes to be able to have things for her to do on the computer sometimes :)

Note: The rest of the magazine is also available to be listened to here. These go back to 2004.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Well, you know how much I love purple, so I was excited enough just being presented with these pretty little boxes:

Ken had said he was giving me "the big part" of my gift, and when the "big part" comes in little boxes, you know it's jewellery!

When we were 16 years old, Ken gave me a locket for Christmas. When we were 21 years old, he gave me my engagement ring. And now that I'm 28, and we've officially known each other for half of our lives, he got me these for Valentine's Day:I love it that we have as much of a past together as we do, and I'm excited that he chose something like this for me- I love that it's purple, I love that it's 2 hearts. A lot of people have posted on their blogs about all of the reasons that they love their husband. Some are funny, some are eloquent, and they've all been nice to read. I just can't seem to come up with a way to put things into words for a "tribute" blog post about mine. Maybe by Father's Day I'll have something for you.

For now, suffice it to say that I love him like crazy and feel incredibly blessed to have him in my life. I'm so glad our two hearts are together and that we've got two little hearts in our care. I love my Ken and I love my girls, and I'm so happy we're together.

This one was size 3-6 months & Katrina is 14 months now, so even though she makes an appearance in the picture above, I'll have to make her a larger one in the interest of avoiding diaper-wedgie, and pass this one on ;)

-------------Notes: In the tutorial there are 2 options for making this without a surger (I used the 2nd option- folding, pressing, and sewing the 4 edges of the fabric strips). Also, she says to use 2-3 times the width of the onesie for the length of the strips (I did 3x).

Step 3: Curl hands into lily-shape, tape bottom. Stick straw through (I was so satisfied when I realized we had green straws)

Step 4: Curl fingers/petals with scissors (like you would curl ribbon) so that the petals bend out instead of stick up. Tape leaves onto straws.

Step 5: Spray flowers with perfume to make them smell-able! (I got this idea from Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog)

Once you've made your flowers, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination! Talia wanted to dress up & pretend she was a bride with a bouquet. Valerie and her daughter tied tissue paper flowers to the trees in their backyard during the winter- how fun would it be to stick these out in your garden?... actually.. maybe we will! :)

Funny story.. after typing this(without any clues from me), Talia said "Maybe we should put them outside... maybe they would blow away..." and I said, "Well, we could stick them in the ground..." and she looked up at me with shining eyes & said "Let's do it!", and had her boots on before I could think twice about it! :) ha!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Some days seem insignificant when I review them. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I can't even recall what I did in the morning. But even these typical days when I have no car and see Ken for only a couple of hours at night, are filled with magical Mommy moments:

Katrina's big smile, her joy when I put a few Cheerios in a bowl for her, her squeal & laughter when Talia chases and plays with her, the knowing smile she gives me when I catch her eye, Talia's funny and creative ideas, her snuggles, and how she always wants me to sing to her, let her paint my nails, or do messy art with her.

How I love these girls, how I love these days, and how grateful I am for the stories and the words that I've seen and heard that remind me to treasure and soak up these times- that they will not last as long as it seems they will and that there is no guarantee on life or anything about it.

How I love my girls, and how I love these days, and how much happier I am when I remember to treasure them and be present in the moment.

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Talia (with shining eyes & a big smile, while eating a pink chocolate heart:Mom, what if I had pink poo!"

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Okay, now that I've got that out there, I'll share a photo: I'm very excited that I've sewed an actual item. :) I made a burpcloth! It was a good first project for me because it didn't really involve a pattern or anything too difficult. I found the idea here, at HowDoesShe.

One side is towel-ish white fabric and the other is a Winnie The Pooh flannel. I feel totally proud of myself even though I know it is not perfect and you don't have to look too closely to see that my sewing skills need work! ;)

I found this tutorial online for how to do a slip stitch since I had never done one before, and found it very helpful.

Disclaimer:You will notice Talia wearing this same outfit (which came from the 80's & used to be mine... in many of our photos. It is not because we are making a fashion statement, but because these are her "art clothes"... okay, just had to get that out there ;)

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

I was looking through some old photos & came across one from a few Valentine's Days ago. This is an idea you could adapt in a number of different ways, but the basic idea is to type or write out a list of different reasons why you love someone, and then stick them to paper hearts which you can hang places.

At the time, we had a bed with a frame that worked perfectly:

Talia was little when I did this, so her main role was to pass me pieces of string (and she was quite happy with the task). Now, we could make this Valentine surprise from her, for Daddy, and she could be part of coming up with the reasons, cutting out the hearts, maybe decorating them, or drawing pictures of things she loves.

Have fun with this one- if anyone does it, let me know & I'd love to see pictures! :)

Edited to adda similar idea that I love- having an"appreciation day" for someone you love, and using balloons with notes around the house.

Monday, February 8, 2010

--------Talia: Robbie Robbie Robbie! (Sung loudly during an extended family dinner)Aunt Rushy: Where did you hear that Talia?Talia: Oh. It's English. Daddy taught it to me one day.

--------Talia, singing:"Have a holly jolly Christmas, it's the best time of the year. I don't know if there'll be snow, but have a cup of cheer... Ho ho.. the mister toe..Humber you can see... somebody waits for you- is there one for me..."

Sunday, February 7, 2010

In the January 2010 issue of The Friend, there was a page with a cut out for a door hanger that your child could write what Heavenly Father has blessed them with on it. I asked her what Heavenly Father has blessed her with, and drew Talia's family for her & then she wanted to draw her Grandma & Grandpa. You can find the printable page online, here.